Marine chemistry articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    By using several decades of hydrographic data and an inverse biogeochemical model that implicitly accounts for all known export pathways, a top-down estimate of the strength of the biological carbon pump is calculated.

    • Wei-Lei Wang
    • , Weiwei Fu
    •  & François W. Primeau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An assessment of variations in phytoplankton nutrient limitation in the tropical Pacific over the past two decades finds that phytoplankton iron limitation is more stable in response to ENSO dynamics than models predict.

    • Thomas J. Browning
    • , Mak A. Saito
    •  & Alessandro Tagliabue

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Catalysis of simple organic carbon molecules into complex macromolecules by Fe and Mn may play a fundamental role in organic carbon preservation, to a degree that could substantially affect the Earth’s carbon and oxygen cycles.

    • Oliver W. Moore
    • , Lisa Curti
    •  & Caroline L. Peacock

  • Article |

    Analysis of a new dissolved iron, ligand and particulate iron seasonal dataset shows that authigenic iron phases help control ocean dissolved iron distributions and the coupling between dissolved and particulate iron pools.

    • Alessandro Tagliabue
    • , Kristen N. Buck
    •  & Peter Sedwick

  • Article |

    Reconstruction of oceanic phosphorus concentrations during a large negative carbon-isotope excursion co-occurring with global oceanic oxygenation and evolution of some of Earth’s earliest animals suggests that decoupled phosphorus and ocean anoxia cycles during the Ediacaran may have prolonged the rise of atmospheric oxygen.

    • Matthew S. Dodd
    • , Wei Shi
    •  & Timothy W. Lyons

  • Article |

    Geochemical insights from a dataset of carbonate stable strontium isotopes suggest that porewater production of authigenic carbonates may have been an overlooked carbonate sink for much of Earth’s history.

    • Jiuyuan Wang
    • , Lidya G. Tarhan
    •  & Noah J. Planavsky

  • Article |

    Deoxygenation in the North Pacific immediately after the Cordilleran ice sheet retreat was shown to be linked with volcanism, suggesting that coupling between atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and solid-Earth systems can drive biogeochemical change.

    • Jianghui Du
    • , Alan C. Mix
    •  & Sharon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mesocosm experiments in different biomes show that future ocean acidification will slow down the dissolution of biogenic silica, decreasing silicic acid availability in the surface ocean and triggering a global decline of diatoms as revealed by Earth system model simulations.

    • Jan Taucher
    • , Lennart T. Bach
    •  & Ulf Riebesell

  • Article |

    In situ experiments have demonstrated chemotaxis of marine bacteria and archaea towards specific phytoplankton-derived dissolved organic matter, which leads to microscale partitioning of biogeochemical transformation in the ocean.

    • Jean-Baptiste Raina
    • , Bennett S. Lambert
    •  & Justin R. Seymour

  • Perspective |

    An assessment of the land-to-ocean cycling of carbon through inland waters, estuaries, tidal wetlands and continental shelf waters provides a perspective on the global carbon cycle and identifies key knowledge gaps.

    • Pierre Regnier
    • , Laure Resplandy
    •  & Philippe Ciais

  • Article |

    Mercury deposition pathways from the atmosphere to the ocean remain uncertain, but mercury stable isotope measurements from the Atlantic and Mediterranean show that ocean uptake of gaseous elemental mercury is more important than previously thought.

    • Martin Jiskra
    • , Lars-Eric Heimbürger-Boavida
    •  & Jeroen E. Sonke

  • Article |

    Oceanic deposition of wildfire aerosols can enhance marine productivity, as supported here by satellite and in situ profiling floats data showing that emissions from the 2019–2020 Australian wildfires fuelled phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean.

    • Weiyi Tang
    • , Joan Llort
    •  & Nicolas Cassar

  • Article |

    Unexpected intervals of low 230Th concentration in marine sediment cores are explained by considering that during at least two such periods, the Arctic Ocean and Nordic seas were composed entirely of fresh water and covered by a thick ice shelf.

    • Walter Geibert
    • , Jens Matthiessen
    •  & Ruediger Stein

  • Article |

    Sea surface density observations in the Arctic Ocean reveal a relationship between the present-day surface water density and the anthropogenic carbon inventory and coincident acidification, suggesting that recent acidification projections are underestimates.

    • Jens Terhaar
    • , Lester Kwiatkowski
    •  & Laurent Bopp

  • Article |

    Convergent estimates of nitrogen fixation from an inverse biogeochemical and a prognostic ocean model show that biological carbon export in the ocean is higher than expected and that stabilizing nitrogen-cycle feedbacks are weaker than we thought.

    • Wei-Lei Wang
    • , J. Keith Moore
    •  & François W. Primeau

  • Letter |

    A structurally unusual zwitterionic metabolite, dimethylsulfoxonium propionate (DMSOP), is synthesized by several dimethylsulfoniopropionate-producing microalgae and marine bacteria and is readily metabolized into dimethylsulfoxide by marine bacteria, expanding our knowledge of the marine organosulfur cycle.

    • Kathleen Thume
    • , Björn Gebser
    •  & Georg Pohnert

  • Letter |

    Nutrient amendment experiments at the boundary of the South Atlantic gyre reveal extensive regions in which nitrogen and iron are co-limiting, with other micronutrients also approaching co-deficiency; such limitations potentially increase phytoplankton community diversity.

    • Thomas J. Browning
    • , Eric P. Achterberg
    •  & C. Mark Moore

  • Outlook |

    The increasing acidity of our seas is a threat to marine life that for many species may be impossible to overcome.

    • Sarah DeWeerdt

  • Letter |

    A climate modelling experiment is used to identify where ocean carbon uptake should change as a result of anthropogenic climate change and to distinguish these changes from internal climate variability; we may be able to detect changing uptake in some oceanic regions between 2020 and 2050, but until then, internal climate variability will preclude such detection.

    • Galen A. McKinley
    • , Darren J. Pilcher
    •  & Nicole S. Lovenduski

  • Letter |

    The processes responsible for driving the expansion of the ocean's oxygen minimum zones remain uncertain; here sediment core data from the Gulf of Alaska suggest that reduced oxygen solubility was a result of ocean warming initiating the expansion of the North Pacific oxygen minimum zone, leading to increased marine productivity and carbon export and, in turn, further reductions in dissolved oxygen levels.

    • S. K. Praetorius
    • , A. C. Mix
    •  & F. G. Prahl

  • Letter |

    Hydrothermal dissolved iron, manganese, and aluminium from the southern East Pacific Rise is transported several thousand kilometres westward across the South Pacific Ocean; global hydrothermal dissolved iron input is estimated to be more than four times what was previously thought and modelling suggests it must be physically or chemically stabilized in solution.

    • Joseph A. Resing
    • , Peter N. Sedwick
    •  & Alessandro Tagliabue

  • Letter |

    GEOTRACES sampling of deep water from the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern oceans allows an estimate of the amount (tripled in surface waters) and distribution (two-thirds increase in water less than a thousand metres deep) of anthropogenic mercury accumulating in the global ocean.

    • Carl H. Lamborg
    • , Chad R. Hammerschmidt
    •  & Mak A. Saito

  • Letter |

    A high-resolution oceanic section of dissolved iron stable isotope ratios reveals that the primary source of dissolved iron to the North Atlantic is atmospheric dust, while seafloor sediments and submarine volcanic vents also contribute significantly.

    • Tim M. Conway
    •  & Seth G. John

  • Letter |

    Despite a reduction in nutrient supply to the North Pacific subtropical gyre, it has undergone a recent increase in nitrogen fixation, and here records of nitrogen isotopes preserved in Hawaiian corals show that this is a trend that could be linked to climate change since the end of the Little Ice Age.

    • Owen A. Sherwood
    • , Thomas P. Guilderson
    •  & Matthew D. McCarthy

  • Article |

    Methane oxidation under anaerobic conditions coupled to sulphate reduction is thought to be carried out by a consortium of methanotrophic archaea (ANME) and sulphate-reducing Deltaproteobacteria; here it is shown that ANME alone can mediate the reaction and that the associated bacteria perform disulphide disproportionation, a new microbial sulphur transformation.

    • Jana Milucka
    • , Timothy G. Ferdelman
    •  & Marcel M. M. Kuypers

  • News & Views |

    A study reveals cyclic changes in the rate of burial of biogenic calcium carbonate at the Pacific ocean floor 43 million to 33 million years ago, as Earth exited a warm 'greenhouse' state to become an ice-capped planet. See Article p.609

    • Heather Stoll

  • News & Views |

    Marine algae known as coccolithophores produce much of the ocean's calcium carbonate. A large survey reveals how these organisms' calcification processes and species distribution change in response to carbon dioxide levels. See Letter p.80

    • David A. Hutchins

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